Three new landfill staff positions approved

Nye County is taking over operation of the Round Mountain landfill following a decision by GandT LLC to terminate its contract with the county but public works director Tom Bolling reported that this wasn’t necessarily bad news. After performing a financial analysis between contracting and county operation, it was estimated that the switch will result in a five-year savings of over half a million dollars.

Bolling went before the Nye County Commission this month to explain the situation and request a new staff position for his department to take over at the Round Mountain landfill. He noted that the current contractor, GandT, had agreed to continue until the end of July but a replacement needed to be decided.

Initially, Bolling had reached out to an alternative contractor but with no interest shown by that company, he turned to the in-county operation method. Comparing the two, Bolling reported that a contract with the alternative provider would run somewhere around $1.44 million over the course of five years. A county employee, plus a new loader and fuel costs, would come to just $782,542 in five years, a difference of more than $664,000.

“So, it was ultimately cheaper, by almost half, for us to operate the landfill ourselves,” Bolling stated.

Commissioner Bruce Jabbour said his only concern was whether a single person could effectively operate the Round Mountain landfill.

“I’m going to remind everyone that as of July 1, there is a charge to go to the landfills. And it’s almost impossible to visualize the operator, if there is one person, jumping up and down on the loader, charging people to come in,” Jabbour remarked.

Bolling assured there was already a plan in place to handle the operation, including the formation of lines and controlled entry. “And we’re putting all of the point-of-sale stuff in the loader, so the operator doesn’t necessarily have to leave the loader and go up to the scale house to be able to charge each individual. He’ll be able to do it from where the trash is dumped,” Bolling said. “It’s a one-man operation.”

When it comes to Tonopah, however, the Nevada Dept. of Environmental Protection’s new requirement for scales means the county needs to have a worker for recording tonnages. During the same meeting, Bolling was also requesting two other new hires for the Tonopah landfill, which is a seven-day-a-week operation rather than four days as in Round Mountain.

Commissioner Debra Strickland said she was not pleased with the idea of hiring three new employees but Bolling quickly clarified that two of the positions have already been budgeted for. Revenue from the newly established landfill tipping fees and the increased parcel fee is expected to fully cover those workers. The third worker would be paid for with the savings from the terminated Round Mountain landfill contract.

Strickland then made the motion to approve the three new positions, with a second from commissioner John Koenig. The motion passed 3-2 with commissioners Ron Boskovich and Ian Bayne against.

Contact reporter Robin Hebrock at rhebrock@pvtimes.com